Masquerades

by Kate Novak

  Victor stumbled forward sheepishly, nodding at the saurial and the halfling as they approached him warily. “Dragonbait. Mistress Ruskettle. How do you do? I was afraid you were the Faceless.”

  Alias looked at the paladin for some confirmation of Victor’s identity.

  Dragonbait concentrated his shen sight on the man before him. There was nothing but the sky-blue of grace in his soul. If he was not Victor Dhostar, he was his twin in all respects. The saurial nodded.

  Alias exhaled and sheathed her sword. Then she leaned in toward Victor and snapped angrily, “What are you doing down here?” Her voice rang through the chamber like a bell clapper.

  Victor sighed. “Being a damned fool,” he answered. “I thought I could help you find the Faceless’s lair. I followed up a few clues and found this place. I was investigating it when I heard a voice down the hall. I hid because I thought it might be the Faceless.”

  “How did you get past the quelzarn?” Olive asked suspiciously.

  Victor blinked twice. “There was a quelzarn? I mean, there really is one?” he asked.

  “Perhaps it didn’t attack because it failed to hold him magically, just as it let me across,” Alias suggested.

  Olive was not mollified. “So how did you get in?” she demanded of the merchant noble.

  “This,” Victor said, pulling out from his vest pocket a key on a pink ribbon. He handed the key to Olive. It appeared identical to the one Alias had from Melman. “There’s a secret door on the banks of the Thunn. You look through that hole in the grip to see it, then the key opens the door.”

  “How did you find the secret passage beyond the meeting room?” Olive demanded, running her fingers along the teeth of the key before handing it back.

  “The latch behind the throne. King Verovan had something like that over a hundred years ago. Now it’s a fairly standard release for the merchant houses to use in their treasuries.”

  “Where did you get the key?” Olive demanded.

  Victor looked down at his hands as if examining them for dirt. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said coolly.

  “Can’t or won’t?” Olive pressed.

  “Olive,” Alias said in a cautioning tone.

  Victor met Olive’s intense gaze. “Won’t,” he retorted. “Certainly not to an employee of a rival house.” He looked at Alias. “I will explain all to you later,” he said, “when we are alone.”

  Alias accepted the noble’s terms with a nod, but she had to ask, “Lord Victor, if you had some clues, why didn’t you contact me?

  Victor sheathed his sword. “There was some indication that another noble house was involved, so I thought I had better check it out first, to spare you another incident like yesterday’s with the Urdos,” the young man explained.

  “You shouldn’t have come down here alone. You could have been killed!” the swordswoman exclaimed.

  “I realize you think of me only as a merchant, but I am capable with a sword and I can take care of myself,” Victor replied.

  There was a chill in the nobleman’s tone that stung Alias like an icy rain. I’ve offended his pride, she realized, and although she couldn’t help think of the awkward way he’d held his sword up only a moment ago, she knew she couldn’t bring herself to challenge him. “Victor, this isn’t about your being able to take care of yourself,” she began carefully. “This is about your life being too important to risk on such a reckless excursion. Your father, the croamarkh, needs you. Westgate needs you.” The swordswoman held his eyes with her own and, in a whisper, added, “I need you.”

  “How absolutely precious,” a harsh whisper echoed through the cavern. “I’d nearly forgotten how amusing mammal love is.”

  Alias and Dragonbait held their swords up at the alert and wheeled back to back in a long-practiced maneuver. Without discussion they kept Lord Victor between them. Olive ducked quickly into the shadow of the iron statues.

  The pool at the far end of the room began to bubble and hiss, and from it rose a great dragon’s skull. “Hello, children.” The words seemed to come from the dragon’s skull. Its tone was mock cheerfulness. “It’s good to see you again, even in my reduced circumstances.”

  It took only moments for all three adventurers to place the voice, but it was Olive who replied first.

  “Misty!” the halfling chirped, sheathing her sword and stepping out from the shadows. “Long time!”

  “So nice to be remembered,” the dragon skull said as the water finished dripping from its sides. “I have not forgotten you either, Mistress Ruskettle. Or you, Champion. Or you, Alias, you red-headed witch.”

  Alias moved cautiously toward the skull. “Mistinarperadnacles. You’re an ally of the Faceless, aren’t you?”

  “No, witch. I’m merely a pawn,” the dragon skull answered. “Just as is everyone in this city, yourselves included.”

  Victor stepped forward. “I am no man’s pawn, dead thing,” the young lord declared.

  Mist’s laughter rang all about them. “You are one of the biggest pawns of all, Dhostar pup. Pawn to your father, pawn to your ambitions, pawn to your … desires.

  “As for you, Alias of the Inner Sea, you are a pawn of the Faceless’s. He has plans for you. He will make himself your master.”

  “An evil sorceress, a lich, a fiend from Tarterus, a mad god, and an assassins’ guild all tried to master me. All are now dead,” Alias retorted.

  “True,” Mist replied. “If your luck is still as it was, you may defeat the Faceless. I will aid you in exchange for a boon.”

  “What boon, wyrm?” the swordswoman demanded.

  “Swear that you will free me from this bondage of my spirit so that I may rest in peace, and I will tell you three of the Faceless’s secrets.”

  “I so swear,” Alias agreed. “First. The device that shields the Faceless and the Night Masters from detection. Tell me all you know of it.”

  “It sits there on that table,” Mist answered, turning so that one eye socket seemed to look at the tree rack hung with the white porcelain masks. “It was crafted by the priests of the temple of Leira, the deceased goddess of illusions, and stolen by the priests of Mask, god of thieves. A doppelganger imitating the Shadowlord of Mask’s temple stole it and used it to build the Night Mask guild. The masks must hang there on that rack for a day to recharge their magical powers. Anyone wearing one of the masks for one hour is protected from all magical detection and divination for four days. The Faceless sets them out for the Night Masters to wear just before the meeting they attend every other night so there is no chance of their being discovered. Even the Faceless dons one beneath the coin mask he wears to conceal his features from his own servants, including myself.”

  “So you don’t know who old Faceless is. Too bad,” Olive sighed.

  “She didn’t say that, Olive,” Alias replied. “She said the Faceless concealed his features from her. But an old wyrm like you can see with more than her eyes, can’t you, Mistinarperadnacles?”

  “So true,” the dragon said. “Is that the second secret you wish me to reveal?”

  Alias hesitated, sensing a trick on the dragon’s part. Mist had no love for her. Vengeance might still override her desire for a peaceful death.

  “We don’t need her to answer that,” Victor declared. “All we need to do is destroy these masks—” The young lord yanked a mask from the tree rack.

  “Victor, no!” Alias shouted. “It could be a trap!”

  “Oh, yes,” Mist said. “Did I fail to mention the masks must be removed from the rack in a particular order?”

  With a shocked look, Victor set the mask back on the tree rack, but it was too late. The floor began to shake as all around the cavern hidden gears and levers of massive proportions began to turn and move. A panel in the workbench slid open and the tree rack containing the masks dropped down into it. An iron gate dropped down over the alcove where the gem-laden amphoras were kept. Larger grates dropped over the walls with the sea chests
and weaponry.

  Mist laughed. “Oh, dear. It does not look like we shall be able to complete our little transaction after all. Ah, well. I have no regrets, knowing this will be your end. Die well, Alias of the Inner Sea. And fond good-byes to you, Mistress Ruskettle, Champion. Lord Victor, it was a pleasure dealing with you.” The dragon skull sank back into the pool.

  The level of water in the pool began to rise until it poured over the edge, splashing to the floor.

  “This doesn’t sound good,” Olive whispered.

  The sound of the gears grinding stopped and there was a moment of relative silence. Then they all heard it: the sound of rushing water, as loud as the ocean itself.

  Vast amounts of water began pouring down on the adventurers from the ceiling, extinguishing Olive’s lantern. The force of the flow was enough to knock Olive off her feet. Dragonbait grabbed the halfling by her cloak and helped her stand upright.

  “We’ve got to get across the bridge!” Alias shouted. She sheathed her sword and snagged Victor’s arm, pulling him toward the stairs to the bridge. Dragonbait splashed behind her with the halfling in tow.

  The stairs had become a rushing cascade of water, and Dragonbait’s flaming sword was their only light now. The swordswoman was forced to press her hands against both sides of the narrow corridor in order to keep herself upright. She could feel Victor, Dragonbait, and Olive bumping into her from behind. As Alias touched down on the last step, she felt it shift beneath her feet. With a sickening dread, the swordswoman tried planting her feet more firmly on the slick stone, but to no avail.

  A wave of water crashed down from the ceiling above the stair, knocking all the adventures off their feet and carrying them at a breakneck speed down the corridor toward the bridge and the sewer.

  First Alias could hear the water plunging down into the sewer. Then there was a sense of weightlessness as the current shot her out across the chasm of the sewer. Just as she took a great gulp of air, she had a glimpse of light—Dragonbait’s flaming sword. Finally, there came the flesh-bruising impact of her body against the fetid sewer water below.

  Alias’s lungs were screaming for air before she managed to break the surface and take a gulp of the foul air. The water was flowing faster, fed by the stream from the Faceless’s water trap, carrying her with it.

  “Dragonbait!” Alias screamed. “Victor! Olive!”

  She spotted the paladin first, still clutching his flaming sword. Olive bobbed alongside him.

  “Where’s Victor?” she shouted.

  “Here,” the nobleman called from just behind her.

  Alias strained to face the young lord’s direction, relieved to see that he seemed to know how to stay afloat. Her chain mail shirt made treading water tiring enough. She didn’t think she could manage helping a fully grown man as well.

  “Try to stay close to the near wall,” the swordswoman shouted to the others. “There have to be some side passages we can—”

  Alias gasped. Something large had pushed against her, and she knew what it had to be.

  The quelzarn’s head broke the water just beside Dragonbait, attracted perhaps by the light from the paladin’s sword. The sea serpent’s teeth gleamed in the flaming light.

  Alias screamed the paladin’s name in his own tongue. The quelzarn dived down, taking the saurial with it. The sewer darkened, but a dim light shone beneath the water’s surface.

  The female warrior took a deep breath and plunged beneath the surface, heading for the light. As long as it shone she knew Dragonbait had not yet been swallowed.

  The foul water stung her eyes, and visibility below the surface wasn’t more than a few feet, but that was enough to detect a great shadow looming before her. Alias grabbed the monster’s fin and hung on with all her might as it wriggled and writhed beneath her. With her arms aching from the strain, the swordswoman pulled herself along the length of the fin, making for the quelzarn’s head. Just when the fire in her lungs grew too intense to bear, the creature broke the surface of the water again, and Alias was able to gasp for air. A dark stain seemed to be flowing from the light beneath the surface. Alias was sure it was blood, but whether the saurial’s or the sea serpent’s she could not tell.

  The creature looped backward on itself, and Alias had a clear glimpse of Dragonbait. The saurial had one clawed foot jammed against the beast’s lower gum and one hand thrust between two needlelike teeth of the upper jaw so that the monster could not snap its jaw shut and swallow its prey. Blood poured from the paladin’s foot and hand as well as from a gash in his thigh. With his flaming sword the paladin was lacerating the monster’s upper palate.

  Alias pulled her dagger from her boot and launched herself at the quelzarn’s head. She managed to catch the fin beside its gill. She could still not reach the beast’s eyes, so she tore a V-shaped gash into the flesh behind the gill. Then she began pulling back on the flesh, stripping it away like whale blubber.

  The beast breached from the water with a shriek and slammed itself and the swordswoman against the sewer wall, dislodging the saurial in its mouth and the human woman at its gill.

  Alias wasn’t sure what happened in the moments she was stunned, but when she next opened her eyes, Dragonbait, his hands clenched in her hair, was holding her head out of the water. The saurial was a powerful swimmer, and he was towing the swordswoman toward a side sewer where Olive and Victor stood shouting.

  The side sewer was eight feet in diameter; the water level in it was only two feet high, so the adventurers’ could work their way against the current. The halfling and the nobleman helped pull the warriors inside. They moved down the tunnel about ten feet, but had to stop to catch their breath and tend to their wounds.

  Dragonbait, after first assuring himself that Alias had suffered no life-threatening injury, handed his weapon to the swordswoman and turned his attention to the wounds the quelzarn had given him.

  As the scent of the paladin’s prayer filled the air, a great roar blasted down the tunnel. The quelzarn thrust its head a few feet into the side passage. Victor, who stood directly in its path, fumbled in the tangles of his cloak, trying, Olive thought, to reach his sword in its scabbard.

  The halfling was sure the young lord was about to become the last of the Dhostar line when the quelzarn slid back out of the tunnel and disappeared.

  Victor gulped and backed farther from the tunnel exit. “That was too close for comfort,” the nobleman said. “If the tide were in and the water higher, it would have come in after us for sure,” he said.

  Olive nodded, her eyes wide with amazement at the young man’s close call. She followed him down the corridor, wondering with suspicion what he seemed to be holding with his hand, which remained buried in his cloak pocket.

  “I believe we should be able to follow this sewer to an opening near a street,” the nobleman said.

  “Yes,” Alias added. “And if we’re lucky, the fog will still be thick, and no one will notice us.”

  “They’ll smell us before they see us,” Olive predicted.

  Sixteen

  Suspicions

  The sewer passage surfaced in a storm drain. After taking a moment to get his bearings, Victor pointed them in the direction of an outdoor ale garden called the Rosebud. There the merchant noble sent a runner for his carriage, and tipped the proprietor generously for the use of his well in the back. Pouring buckets of fresh water over each other, the four managed to scrape all of the sewer muck and most of the smell off their skin and clothes. Olive, gathering up her sopping cloak, excused herself, declaring she had a previous engagement. Alias didn’t argue. She was anxious to grill Victor about the source of his key, and she knew the merchant lord would say nothing in Olive’s presence.

  Shortly after the halfling had gone, a young serving boy brought them three mugs of mulled wine. Alias allowed herself a few minutes to enjoy the sensation of warmth creeping back into her bones, then she forced herself to return to the business at hand.

  “Victor, y
ou have to tell me where you found the key,” Alias insisted.

  Victor stared hard into his mulled wine as if an answer might appear in the mug. “I began thinking about what you said last night, that maybe Father was paying the Night Masks on the side but was too proud to admit it. I started searching through his desk in secret. I couldn’t find anything about payoffs, but I found this key. It was in an envelope with instructions on how to use it.”

  “And the instructions?” Alias asked. “Were they written in your father’s hand?’

  “Yes,” Victor admitted. “I thought I should check it out by myself, in case it wasn’t anything important.”

  “Or in case it was,” Alias commented.

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” Victor insisted. “There could be a perfectly good reason why he had the key. You have a key, too?”

  Alias nodded.

  “How did you get it?” the noble asked.

  “I took it from Melman shortly before the Night Masks blew up his home with him in it,” the swordswoman explained.

  Dragonbait looked at Alias with surprise. She was deliberately misleading the noble to believe that Melman was dead.

  “Victor, did you tell your father I was checking up on Melman?”

  “When I got home last night. We had this stupid argument. He said I was distracting you from your duties. I told him what you told me at the party about Melman.” The young man’s eyes widened in surprise. “You don’t think—he couldn’t. It’s just a coincidence. My father is not involved with the Night Masters!”

  Now it was Alias’s turn to look down into her mulled wine for a reply.

  “You said yourself, last night, that you didn’t think Father was the Faceless, that he had no reason to be involved with them. He hired you to get rid of them,” Victor argued. “Wait! He could have gotten the key from Kimbel after Kimbel tried to assassinate him.”

  “Then why didn’t he turn the key over to Durgar?” Alias asked.